-1- Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and ...

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done on this verse among biblical interpreters 1 in the last 50 years, and what has been done continues to view this verse as an instruction favoring celibacy. However, two significant developments with respect to the ongoing interpretive reception of this verse have made it necessary to revisit alternative possibilities. -2- The first of these developments is the dawning awareness in modern Christian communities of new forms of sexuality and sexed identity. One need only consider the struggles within Presbyterian and Episcopalian traditions concerning the place and role of homosexuals and transgenders within their communities to understand how far we have come since the Stonewall riots and Christine Jorgenson. What were once considered severely deviate psychoses have now entered mainstream Christianity. These groups are demanding to be received with dignity and respect, as part of God’s own creation. How one understands and views human sexuality and sexed identity will predetermine one’s response to these demands. Second is the recent research into ancient forms of sexuality and sexed identities spurred on by recent work in Queer theory and history. 2 Literature about ancient masculinities, eunicism, medicine and moral philosophy have brought a new light to old and overlooked data. What has developed is a new appreciation of how cultures of the Mediterranean viewed sexual practices and their meaning for placing individuals in society. In light of this, significant new perspectives can be brought to the literature from the ancient world regarding the perceptions about and roles played by eunuchs as sex- gendered identities. 1 On the other hand, see the recent work in culture criticism of G. Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York: Routledge, 2000). 2 I will not tax the reader with the numerous and growing citations in these areas of exploration, but simply point to some representative works, e.g., J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 10 th Anniversary Ed. (New York/London: Routledge, 1999). E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). D. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York/London: Routledge, 1989). M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 3 vols. (Los Angeles/London: Vintage, rpt. 1990 - 1992).
-3- In what follows, I will problematize the “celibate” eunuch by reference to ancient historical gender systems that undermine the traditional masculinist and heterosexist reading of this verse. Both ancient religious practices and early Christian reception of this saying understood the call for eunicism to be a literal act of religious devotion with profound social-gender consequences. These consequences reverberate throughout the “single-sex” continuum of the ancient world, taking aim precisely at anxieties regarding the vulnerability of the privileged status of the male in ancient society. The eunuch was a figure perceived to be neither celibate nor morally chaste, but was a monstrous gender formation whose ability to navigate within and take on properties of both male/masculine and female/feminine worlds (physically, sexually, socially, culturally, even politically) was the source of his/her ambivalent social status. It was only several centuries later, under the guidance of aristocratic bishops, that the eunuch was transformed into a symbol of masculine askesis and superiority, thus becoming a means by which to reinforce the very heterosexist structure it transgressed. The implications of this study for modern exegesis of this text, but more importantly for modern discussions of the role and place of transgressive (i.e., non-heterosexist conforming) identities in the church are profound. Modern interpreters perpetuating the celibate reading of this text do so without recourse to significant socio-historical gender- norm data of the ancient Mediterranean world. More importantly, however, such modern interpreters undermine the power and radicality of this saying with respect to the dominical critique of our cherished assumptions regarding human sexuality and the importance of normative heterosexism as a religious (not to mention social, moral and phenotypic) ideal. Modern Interpretive Receptions As mentioned above, modern interpreters of the logion in Matthew 19:12 overwhelmingly, indeed unanimously view the eunuch within a particular constellation of
Page 1: Abstract -1- Eunuchs and the Postge
Page 5 and 6: marriage after divorce (consecrated
Page 7 and 8: Eunuchs and Sexuality in the Ancien
Page 9 and 10: of the phallus: men’s phalluses w
Page 11 and 12: (impudicitia), “changeable”,
Page 13 and 14: post-pubescent males) the suspicion
Page 15 and 16: -15- The Matthean context offers us
Page 17 and 18: (2 Kgs 9) and their presence extend
Page 19 and 20: -19- ...they belie their sex and ar
Page 21 and 22: What must have been understood when
Page 23 and 24: to name a few. Perhaps its most fam
Page 25 and 26: -25- The earliest report of the des
Page 27 and 28: 23, wherein the eunuch becomes a sy
Page 29 and 30: interpretation of this text underst
Page 31 and 32: the community, but to be healed of
Page 33: to Christian tradition must confron

-1- Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and ...

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